Everything begins with education. To be able to advance as a society, to spur technological innovation, to reduce discrimination and to unlock the potential of all people, a comprehensive and accessible education is imperative. This has been expressly identified by the UN as critical to our collection sustainable development. This is the goal of SDG 4. The UN writes that we must "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all."
This lens assesses the education provision and quality of certain subjects at the institution which we believe have the greatest potential to positively impact society: Education, Politics, Social Policy, Law, Art & Design. It also looks at research into relevant SDG's and alumni impact in the education sector.
With the same principle in mind as many of the other performance lenses in this ranking, we also take into account performance at a national level. It is our collective duty to ensure that students, who use rankings, get a rounded and realistic view of the higher education quality not only at the university they will study at, but in the country in which they will potentially spend several years.
Weights of metrics in Impact of Education:
| Code | Metric | Metric Weight |
| IE1 | Research Impact on SDGs for Education | 3% |
| IE2 | Academic Reputation for Impact of Education | 1% |
| IE3 | Alumni Impact for Education | 1% |
| IE4 | Academic Freedom Index | 1% |
| IE5 | Impact of Education National Statistics |
1% |
IE1. Research Impact on SDGs for Education
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| IE1.1 | Research output produced by institutions, classified by Elsevier as research in SDG 4 (Quality Education). A score from 0 to 100 is produced using this methodology. | A score from 1 to 100 is produced using this methodology. |
IE2. Academic Reputation for Impact of Education
The following subjects were chosen to reflect a set of subjects that may be seen to be the foundations of a good society - the rule of law, quality education, a strong social policy, a functioning political system and the advocacy of the Arts as a fundamental aspect of humanity.
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| IE2.1 | Academic Reputation from most recently published subject ranking in Education | The score is taken from the most recent subject ranking, and will be between 0 and 100. Each subject score is summed, and then averaged with the other scores. The average is then multiplied by the metric weight, giving the final metric score. |
| IE2.2 | Academic Reputation from most recently published subject ranking in Politics | |
| IE2.3 | Academic Reputation from most recently published subject ranking in Social Policy | |
| IE2.4 | Academic Reputation from most recently published subject ranking in Law | |
| IE2.5 | Academic Reputation from most recently published subject ranking in Art & Design |
The academic reputation in the specific subject is non-zero if institution is eligible for that subject and included in that subject (see eligibility and inclusion criteria for QS World University Rankings by Subject).
IE3. Alumni Impact for Education
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| IE3.1 | We look at impactful alumni working across the Education sector, and/or having an impact on global education. We have used relevant awards and lists such as Nobel or Wolf Prize, Turing Award, and similar awards for social and educational impact. This metric also includes the alma-mater of the Top 10 most cited researchers in each of the 5 faculty areas (as defined by QS), as per SciVal. | A scaled score between 0 and 100. |
IE4. Academic Freedom Index
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| IE4.1 | The Academic Freedom Index is a report complied by researchers from the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany and researchers from V-Dem in Gothenburg, Sweden, one of the world’s largest social science data collection projects on democracy and related concepts. This research assesses how free and open a country's research culture is, and whether its academics can pursue research without threat or sanction. | A by-country score taken from the report. |
IE5. Impact of Education National Statistics
| Sub metric | Description | Scoring |
| IE5.1 |
Inbound mobility rate from UNESCO |
The average of the 3 scores is multiplied by the metric weight, giving the final metric score. This is scaled between 0 and 100. |
| EE5.2 |
Graduation ratio from tertiary education from UNESCO |
|
| EE5.2 |
Education expenditure from World Bank |